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Help From Home Newsletter - January 2010

Fonebak - For every mobile that is recycled via Fonebak, a donation to BBC Children in Need will be made. Oh, and you'll also get cash back for the mobile as well.

The FACTory - FACTory is a game that lets people enter knowledge into the Cyc Knowledge Base, a large store of common-sense knowledge, and hopefully have fun doing it. The game teaches Cyc the kinds of things that people know but computers often don't — in short, common sense.

Consumer Consequences - Consumer Consequences is an interactive game designed to illustrate the impact of our lifestyles on the Earth by asking you a series of questions about your lifestyle, and as you play, it will show you how many "Earths" of natural resources it would take to sustain all 6.6 billion humans… if everyone lived like you.

Mary's Meals Backpack Project - Fill up an old school bag/back pack with some everyday school things. These bags will then be given out to poor children, mostly in Malawi, Uganda, Liberia and Romania. Good quality second hand items are encouraged to be included in the pack, which can then be posted off to a Distribution Centre.

FairPensions - FairPensions campaigns for major institutional investors to adopt Responsible Investment, using shareholder power to hold companies to account. Petition your pension to do the right thing.

neuroMod - This is the Human Memory website of the University of Amsterdam, where you can find quite a few tests that measure human memory – all in the name of research.

Global Ideas Bank - If you have an idea that has potential to change the way the world works, then submit it to Global Ideas Bank for other people to comment, use and/or develop. So many categories to choose from including Developing World, Charity, Community etc.

SITES OMITTED

Save The World With Music

PlanetSave

All sites omitted because they have either closed down or are no longer operational.

FEATURED VOLUNTEER ACTION

Eco Earth

Eco Earth is an environment portal and search engine. It is run by Ecological Internet and tries to identify, filter and network all the best information found on an environmental subject through one starting point. Ecological Internet, Inc. is a non-profit organization that daily identifies news articles and web sites which they link too and then make searchable with a true Internet search engine. They also provide analysis of important climate, forest, water, ocean and general environmental sustainability policy developments on their blog, which they send out to interested persons via email.

Of particular interest to Help From Home readers are the Action Alerts links which will take you to organisations that are actively involved in a particular environmental issue. Each link has a brief description about the issue it is tackling head-on, whilst some of the links are further categorised as 'Popular', 'Editor's Pick' and 'New' to give you an even more informed flavour of the organisations that are available.

All in all, it's quite a handy and informative website that allows you to participate in environmental issues from the comfort of your own home.

This action can be found here

VOLUNTEER ACTIONS LISTED

Charity = 200

'Green' = 186

Advocacy = 124

SITES OF INTEREST

We Are What We Do

We Are What We Do attempts to inspire individuals to make a difference to the world through everyday actions such as recycling waste paper, saying thank you, shopping locally and walking to work. They have a section for actions at school and in the workplace as well.

I Take The Vow

Promotes the concept of and inspires people to take a vow of non-violence in their thoughts, speech and action via articles and suggestions based around conversation, motivation and inspiration. Thae the vow and be counted as a 'Vow Ambassador'.

CHARITY GAMES

Play a game and a donation goes to charity at no cost to you.

Aid To Children

For each word definition you answer correctly, 0.25 cents is donated to children in the most impoverished places in the world. Incredibly, it costs 25 cents to feed a child a single meal.

10 SECOND FREE DONATION

Click the link below to take you to a webpage that generates cash donations to programs that fund s Nature Conservancy projects - all at no cost to you. Just click on the orange 'click to donate' button.